


VI. Drooling - Pavlov's Fuckin' Dogs

by 56leon



Series: 2018 Inktober Prompts / Fictober Fills [6]
Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Experimental Style, Gen, POV Second Person, it's my weirdest one so far honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 12:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16218635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/56leon/pseuds/56leon
Summary: Inktober/Fictober Day 6. Drooling.When you first meet her, you think you're invincible to her charms. As it turns out, you're a bigger fool than the rest of them.[Experimental 2nd Person POV, featuring Primrose Azelhart and an unnamed tavern patron.]





	VI. Drooling - Pavlov's Fuckin' Dogs

**Author's Note:**

> me in chicken: I don't know how I can fuck up 'drooling'.  
> me now: yeah, I fucked up 'drooling'.
> 
> Honestly, I don't know how this happened either, only that it's not my best, I wrote it in an hour and then passed out at my laptop until my 11:45 alarm went off. Sorry.

##  Dogs will drool at the site of any food, / So go ahead and ring the bell, / Sing a classical song about it and / Then advertises what sells  
  
          -Charmaine J Forde

* * *

When you first see her in the tavern, she's dark eyes and wild hair and freedom. You think highly of her, of course, but your eyes wander over every other patron in the bar. All men - and some women, you note - are absolutely enthralled with her, and who can blame them? She’s a dancer, and the bloody best one any of you have ever seen travel through this small town. But whereas you watch her with a keen eye and observant mind, the others eat her up with their eyes alone.

Ha. They're absolute suckers for the woman, drowning in a show that they feel particularly privy to. Every time her body moves, they watch eagerly, like an animal waiting for a bone.

Like Pavlov and his fuckin’ dogs.

She makes eye contact with you, but you’re not swayed. You can’t be, when you know what she wants, and you’re not willing to give it to her. Still, she spins around the stage, entrancing the others and making them fall head over heels for whatever twitch of her hips or extension of her arms she deems fit to perform next. You’re better than that of course- not by much, since you allow yourself to indulge in her movements, but enough to recognize her tactics and that makes you one step further from whatever scheme she tries to pull.

With every glance at you she takes, she seems to recognize it. Sultry stares melt into confusion, followed by intrigue and curiosity. She knows you won’t let yourself be ensnared, and it makes her question you, up to the point where she bows as the performance ends and you swear her eyes never leave yours for a moment. When she stops and exits stage left, the entire tavern seems to change immediately, falling back into the dim chatter that it had before, but your heart is still set on that woman, the one who seems to be able to hypnotize and release her victims upon a single whim.

When she exits the tavern, she’s covered in a dark shawl, but she sees you once more and tilts her head towards the door. You follow her out as she beckons you to follow her. This woman, who has the ability to charm entire nations at her whim.....you want to understand her, to pick her apart in ways that nobody else has. And she’s invited you, so you see no reason to hesitate any longer as your feet carry you out into the streets, towards the maze that she entices you to enter. She drifts ever out of range, but still you follow, and perhaps that is not the only mistake you’ve made that night.

So entranced by her magic - no, not magic, but pure skill, something that comes not from sorcery or witchcraft - are you that you do not notice the blade in your chest until she is moving away and your vision is tunneling. Only then do you realize, with the world turning to black, that you're like every other man who has been taunted by those hips, allured by that voice, held hostage by a world of beauty that you've gotten far too comfortable with. Besotted with a mere concept of a woman, the one that she’s planted in your brain.

Like Pavlov and his fuckin’ dogs, you think blandly. 

You fall.


End file.
